Hi there 👋

I’m a student interested in self-hosting and homelab stuff!

  • This blog is mainly used for my own documentation/deployment of difficult or undocumented projects that I find interesting, as well as random things that I might find interesting and worthwhile to write about.
  • My interests are Linux/Hypervisor, OSS and self-hosting. I do homelab stuff also, since it’s a learning thing to have hands-on experience, I guess.
  • I also break my systems a lot.

Notes about an ORICO enclosure (TX25C3/RTL9201)

This is a Type-C to Type-C enclosure, with the Realtek RTL9201 chipset: 1 Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0bda:9201 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL9201 It has support for UASP, TRIM and SMART, but the latter was not mentioned. For SMART, existing versions of smartmontools output the following: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 root@proxmox:~# smartctl -a /dev/sdc smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-6.11.0-1-pve] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org /dev/sdc: Unknown USB bridge [0x0bda:0x9201 (0xf200)] Please specify device type with the -d option. Use smartctl -h to get a usage summary Support for the device was only added in Oct 15, 2024 (Changeset #5621) ...

21 December, 2024 Â· 1 min Â· 144 words Â· dinhcap

GMKTec NucBox M5 Upgraded (M5 PRO) Review as a Home Server.

Originally, I’ve wanted a new computer to replace my current one. It’s an old Xeon E3-1230v2 with 4 cores and 8 threads, with more than enough power to ‘currently’ support the stuff that I use/host. However, the expandability was not so great: A H61 motherboard with 2 DDR3 ram slots, at a maximum of 16GB total. The machine was also used for regular web browsing and writing for this website (yay) as a secondary computer so there’s no room to add more stuff. On top of that, it sips 60-70 watts on idle! So my idea was to get an Intel N100 Mini PC, but after weighing the pros and cons, I’ve decided to spend more and settle on this 5700U machine because of it’s efficiency, more PCIe lanes and RAM support. ...

30 May, 2024 Â· 7 min Â· 1475 words Â· dinhcap

Cool Applications and Services

Tools for Windows specifically Microsoft Activation Scripts (MAS) Open source, one of the most widely used activation script. Used by MS support employees, so why not? The script source code is even hosted on GitHub, which itself is owned & operated by Microsoft. MAS provides activation for nearly all Windows and Office distributions, even ones that you didn’t know existed. They have activation methods different from tools like KMSPico and other volume-based licensing, which is cool. ...

7 May, 2024 Â· 6 min Â· 1204 words Â· dinhcap

Setting up RAID1 array & migrating data.

I currently have two HDD drives of identical sizes (not identical in form factor and brand though), and since they are not used fully (<50% storage remaining for both), I feel like it’s good to setup a RAID1 array for increased read speed and data reliability. Two HDDs were used, and I’m on EndeavourOS Galileo for this. Transferring data & backing up. First, I move my data from the WD HDD to the other HDD using rsync: ...

6 February, 2024 Â· 6 min Â· 1210 words Â· dinhcap